FINLAND Law and Practice Contributed by: Pekka Tuunainen, Pekka Tuunainen Attorneys Ltd
owned by the other party. Everyday spending cannot be normally used successfully as ground for claims. To use this cohabitation legislation there are two requirements. Cohabitation must have contin - ued at least five consecutive years or cohabit - ants must have a common child. This does not guarantee any compensation. Requirements for compensation set in law must be met. 2.7 Enforcement If a party has a court order, it is enforceable by law and a claim can be taken to the enforcement office. The enforcement system is a public ser - vice and a separate office. It is considered to be effective and cheap for the claimant. If a financial decision is made by the distribu - tor, as it is in most cases, this decision is not enforceable and one must have enforcement of judgment first. Judgments and similar orders from European Union countries are enforceable. Orders from other countries are not. There are exclusions on spousal maintenance orders and those can be accepted as enforceable. 2.8 Media Access and Transparency As most cases are handled by distributors, these are completely private proceedings, and the media does not have any access to these proceedings. This is one of the reasons why the system of distributors is widely accepted. If a case is appealed to court, the main rule is that all material and cases are public. It is possible to request that financial information of spouses should be kept private, but courts normally do not accept such requests.
It is not possible to anonymise proceedings and names of the parties at court. The media’s ability to report is somewhat lim - ited and it cannot disclose the names of par - ties unless it is a question of a public figure or publishing the names has public interest. This is quite well followed by the media. Politics, celebrities, sportsmen and well-known business figures are normally the ones whose names are published. One important fact is that after the prenuptial or postnuptial agreement has been registered in a magistrate’s court, which is mandatory, this agreement is a public document and it can be obtained from the register by anyone. A magis - trate can hide some financial information in the agreement (eg, exact amounts to be paid in case of divorce). 2.9 Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) Private distributors are the first instance to han - dle financial matters. The law states that it is the distributor’s duty to encourage parties to agree their dispute and help parties to reach agree - ment. It depends on the case on how successful this can be. In the author’s experience, about half of the cases end up in agreement with the distributor’s proceedings. Such agreement is final and comparable to a court judgment. To get it enforced, exequatur must be applied for from the court, but this is not usually needed, as part of the agreement is that the agreement is enforced before it is final. If the case is appealed to court, the court offers the possibility of mediation. Such mediation is stated in law and it is completely voluntary. Not using it does not have any negative effect on the normal court proceeding. Mediation is run by another experienced judge, that was not previ -
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